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Digital radio buyers guide

Nathan Taylor- 02/04/2009 01:36:15

Tags: broadcasting, buyers guide, dab+, digital radio

Digital radio makes its debut in May, promising better quality and a range of new features not available from current radio broadcasts.

Digital radio, especially Australia's DAB+ technology (as opposed to the standard DAB used in the UK and much of Europe), is to regular AM/FM radio what digital TV is to analog TV. That is, it provides a clean signal and more space on the airwaves for extra stations, as well as a simpler method of finding and tuning stations.

As with digital TV, digital radio is an all-or-nothing proposition. Either you get the signal in full quality or you don't get it at all - it doesn't deteriorate like FM radio does. What might happen in a poor reception area is that you receive intermittent signals, but for the most part any digital radio reception you get will be clean. Then it's just up to the receiver to decode the signal and the speaker to pump out the audio.

 

DAB and DAB+

Digital radio has been broadcasting in Australia for some time on a test basis, but it's only in May that DAB+ broadcasts will come online. Prior to this most digital radio broadcasts (with the exception of a couple of test channels and an ABC radio station) will be primarily DAB, which provides a lower quality level - low enough that FM radio would often sound better than DAB, especially in areas of high FM radio reception. This has certainly been the experience in Europe as well, where most digital radio broadcasters use the old DAB system.

That's because DAB broadcasting uses MP2 encoding on audio, which is a relatively inefficient way of compressing the audio. Even at the common 192kbps bitrate, it lost a lot of the depth of the original audio, often sounding flat in our tests, relative to FM. In effect, DAB radio was like MP3 music compressed at a fairly low bit rate.

DAB+ is a whole different ball of wax. It uses the much more efficient compression system called AAC+, which delivers roughly three times the audio quality at the same bit rate. At 128kbps, it produces audio that's nearly indistinguishable from CD-audio, and because it's digital it doesn't suffer from the same kind of interference as FM.

When we tested DAB/DAB+ products, which was before the official launch of DAB+, a number of stations were broadcasting in 192kbps DAB, including Sydney's Nova 969, 2UE and several others. ABC radio had a DAB+ test channel and there were two other 64kbps DAB+ test channels as well. Even while we were testing, 64kbps test DAB+ channels were sounding better than the 192kbps DAB channels available.

Further reading

Catch all of our latest digital radio news, articles and reviews, in our Digital Radio section of the site.

Digital radio - new sound, new stations - the new sound of the airwaves is gaining momentum, with more radio stations now broadcasting in digital and more DAB+ equipment in stores. This articlde takes a look over the digital radio landscape.

Digital radio terminology: radiotext and UPnP - digital radio will see some new terms thrown our way, such as radiotext (or dynamic label segment) and UPnP - we look at what these terms mean.

Digital radio review round-up - 12 of Australia's first - Digital radio begins broadcast in Australia on May 1... and GadgetGuy has gathered 12 of the first digital radios to go on sale.

Digital radio vs AM and FM radio - Digital radio is touted as being not only new, but demonstrably better than AM and FM radio in terms of audio quality and programming flexibility.

Digital radio FAQ - What is digital radio, and when is it launching? Where can I get it? Is is free? What's different from AM and FM radio? These questions and more answered.

Competition - win 1 of 2 Roberts digital radios

First prize is a Roberts Sound 43 digital radio, valued at $799. Second prize is a Roberts Stream 2 digital radio, value at $499. The competition closes at 5 pm (Sydney time) on 10 November, 2009. Click the graphic below to go to the competition page.

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